ר׳ לוי בן חביב

ר׳ לוי בן יעקב אבן חביב (c.1483–1545), the הרלב״ח, was a leading Sephardi halakhist and head of Jerusalem’s rabbis. Born in Zamora to ר׳ יעקב בן חביב, he was a child of the Spanish expulsion. In Portugal, under King Manuel’s forced-conversion campaign, the young ר׳ לוי was baptized against his will. He escaped as soon as possible and returned openly to Judaism in Ottoman Salonica, where he studied and later taught. After his father’s death, he completed and published the unfinished sections of עין יעקב in 1516, an important act of literary preservation. He first visited Jerusalem in 1523, returned briefly to Salonica and settled permanently in Jerusalem in 1525, becoming its chief rabbinic authority. He worked to sustain the impoverished community and maintained correspondence across the Ottoman Jewish world. His defining public controversy began in 1538, when ר׳ יעקב בירב and the Safed scholars attempted to renew classical semikhah. Although offered ordination, הרלב״ח rejected the procedure as legally defective and defended Jerusalem’s right to be consulted in קונטרס הסמיכה. His responsa, calendar studies and semikhah materials were printed posthumously at Venice in 1565 and remained important precedents in later halakhic debate.